


might as well

by queervampire



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 04:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13756731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queervampire/pseuds/queervampire
Summary: The first time Leonard meets James Kirk, it’s the man’s eyes that he notices first.(a brief exploration into Jim's and Bones' budding friendship after the shuttle ride)





	might as well

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally gonna be part of a 6+1 McKirk fic, but I haven't finished it in months and most likely never will, so I'm just posting this as a one-shot.
> 
> Title from ["Might as Well" by the Lil Smokies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akEFalgrC2k).

The first time Leonard meets James Kirk, it’s the man’s eyes that he notices first. It’s not their irises; they’re a pretty blue color - not dissimilar to the clear sky that he hopes they’ll safely land under in just a few hours - but the first thing he truly sees is how bloodshot they are. The various bruises and cuts all over the rest of his face are next. By the time Leonard’s done rambling on about the various reasons why he _hates_ space that could and should double as a list of reasons why him enlisting is one of the worst ideas he’s ever had, he’s come up with about twenty different ways as to why the man ( _Jim_ , that’s what he’d introduced himself as) looks the way he does. He drinks from Leonard’s flask like a man drinks his last glass of water before going into the desert for 40 days and nights. That lowers the reasons for Jim’s current state-of-affairs to any involving copious amounts of alcohol.

“So,” says the kid, after a nice and silent ten minutes post-take-off. “You’re not from Iowa, are you?”

Leonard just looks at him. He hopes it hides the trembling from the possible panic attack just waiting to break out of his skin.

It apparently does. “I just…” Jim hesitates, like he’s not even sure what he meant. “Your accent. It’s really, uh-” He gestures vaguely at the other man’s face. “Southern.”

Leonard looks at him a little more. Jim looks back, squirms, then makes a face. He gives the kid a break and hopes opening his mouth won’t send vomit all over him.

He’s able to say “Georgia,” without much effort; he considers it a success. “Savannah, specifically. I’m... I _was_ a doctor.” The second the words are out of his mouth is when he realizes that’s too much to say about his past life when he’s trying to start a new one.

Jim doesn’t know that, of course. He just nods. “Cool. I’m from Riverside. I didn’t have much of anything - just my family’s house and a bike. Took me three years to save up for it. Then I left it with some random guy at the dock.” He laughs, but it’s quiet, like he’s just been reminded of an inside joke with himself. Then, as an afterthought: “The closest I’ve ever been to Georgia is Kansas City.”

Leonard isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say about that. He hums. Jim seems to accept that as a proper response, but then they hit a rough patch of turbulence that sends Leonard into a _mild_ panic attack and they don’t speak for the rest of the flight. It’s a long six hours.

While Leonard goes through the five stages of grief over his old life (and possibly this one if the metal death-trap they’re in is an ounce as unreliable as he feels and _fuck_ this was a mistake), he swears Jim physically shrinks beside him. By the time they’ve _very safely_ landed in SF, his already fleeting aura of young-and-smug stupidity has faded to a blank stare at the passed-out cadet in front of them.

Everyone is slow to leave, like they’ve all finally realized that the moment they step off this shuttlecraft is the beginning of something terrifyingly unknown. Leonard is hyper-aware of how much time it takes him to release the seat belt from his white-knuckle grip, flex his hands, stand up on shaky legs that he can’t really feel, and gather his meager belongings and just _move_ and suddenly he’s standing under the late-august San Francisco sun and _fuckity fuck fuck_.

“Shit,” says Jim, who apparently is standing next to him now. Well. At least he’s not alone in the feeling.

But then Jim is turning around with an outstretched hand and a half-assed grin. “So.”

Ah. “So,” says Leonard. He blinks at Jim’s hand before finally taking it. “Good luck.”

Jim laughs, his smile a little smaller but more genuine, now. “Yeah. Good luck, man.” They shake on it.

The kid stands awkwardly there for a minute afterwards, staring at the space where their hands just were with a quirk to the corner of his lips and eyes that are now strikingly blue in the afternoon light, before nodding at _something_ and wandering off into the crowd of mostly red.

Leonard stands there a while longer till he ends up being an obstruction to foot traffic. He wanders around, lost in a sea that is distinctly younger than he is, which makes him feel much older than he should. Once he finally finds out where he’s supposed to be and what he’s supposed to sign ( _there’s so much to sign_ ), blonde boys from Riverside are the last thing on his mind.

In fact, Leonard doesn’t think about anything except school or his possibly budding alcoholism or his roommate’s total lack of respect for sleep schedules just so he and his girlfriend can bone every other day _with Leonard in the same god-damned room_ for the next two and a half weeks. He doesn’t let himself think of anything else. If he does, he’ll start thinking of the hospital in Savannah and then he’ll think of his old life and thinking of his old life will make him think of his ex-wife and his family and what a fuck-up he is and before Leonard knows it, he’ll hit the bottom of his depression-spiral-staircase. He does not need that right now, so he doesn’t think of anything but school and all of its troubles till he’s walking across the drillfield on Friday evening and someone shouts right in his ear, “Bones!”

Leonard does _not_ swear. It’s still a damn near thing. He opts for a drawn-out “ _Jesus_!” instead, which is marginally more classy than _fuck_ or _shit_ or _holy fuck-shit!_

Then he turns around to see who it is and ends up saying “Shit,” anyway. Jim grins back at him.

“Hello to you, too, old man,” he says, not missing a beat. Leonard feels like he’s several behind.

“Why did you yell in my ear?” he says. Then, “I’m thirty-two. I’m not _that_ old.”

Jim makes a face. It’s incredibly offensive.

“I’m _not_!”

“You’re a _decade_ older than me.”

“And you’re a decade dumber, congratulations.” Jim opens his mouth for what’s probably a witty comeback, so Leonard stops him with, “Why did you yell ‘bones’ in my ear?”

Jim all-too-happily opens his mouth to explain, but Leonard’s already moving back towards his dorm, so he ends up speed-walking behind him as he speaks. “One: you’re a little rude-”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, and two: it’s your nickname.”

“What.”

“Well, on the shuttle, you were all like, ‘ _I only have my bones left_ ,’” - he says it with a deep voice and heavy accent that’s not at all what Leonard sounds like - “So I kind of just thought of you as ‘the bones guy’, and then I started calling you ‘Bones’ in my head. Then I saw you and wanted to say hi, so-”

They stop at before a crosswalk as a bus drives by. Jim nearly knocks right into Leonard, but just barely avoids tripping over himself instead. Leonard turns back to him with narrowed eyes. “Do you want something from me?”

Jim scoffs as they start walking again, falling in step with one another. “What? A guy can’t come up to another guy just to see how he’s been?”

This guy definitely has friends who actually want to hang out with him. This is just harassment. “Literally all you’ve done is given me a nickname I don’t want and declared me a senior citizen.”

“If the shoes fit-”

Leonard takes a step to the edge of the sidewalk, stops, and is nice enough to let Jim not trip over himself again before speaking. “What do you _want_?”

Jim looks at him, a little wide-eyed, before shrugging with a frown. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” says Leonard, voice flat.

“Yep.” Jim even makes a show of turning as if to leave before facing him again, smile significantly bigger and just as disconcerting. “Actually…”

If he doesn’t just get on with it, Leonard will turn around and walk away till he’s back in the safety of his dorm and not look back. Ivan’s probably there, though, in the midst of committing unspeakable acts with Lisa in places they really should not be. He rethinks that plan.

Jim continues. “I was just about to hit up one of the bars by campus and you look like you need to. So. Are you free?”

Leonard actually isn’t. He has a date with a lab assignment and plans to study for way too many tests, but he left his PADD on his desk. In their dorm, where his roommate is probably with his girlfriend, doing those aforementioned unspeakable acts that Leonard wishes he could just unsee. He hopes they’re not doing it on his desk this time. God, he needs a new roommate. He also needs a drink.

He also needs to _work_ , whether he’s traumatized by his roommate’s sex life or not. Jim either senses Leonard’s hesitance or just really wants his attention ‘cause next thing he knows, Jim is giving him a look he definitely gives sexual partners to seduce them, only the eyes are wider and he’s done something with his forehead to make him look innocent-looking in this really unnerving way that has Leonard willing to say anything to get him to stop, like:

“Oh my god, if I say yes, will you _stop doing that_.”

A roommate will take weeks if not _never_ to get, but he feels like getting rid of Jim will take an eternity. Indulging him once would probably get him off his back. It’s definitely not because of the puppy-dog eyes, or because he actually wants to go with him. He really doesn’t. He just really, really, _really needs a drink._

Jim’s face immediately goes from the weird-manipulative-thing to a genuine shit-eating grin as he throws an arm around Leonard’s shoulders and oh, yeah. Jim is definitely paying his tab.

Jim doesn’t pay his tab. Leonard ends up paying for the both of them, ‘cause the kid’s ass is fucking _broke_ , but they get along after a couple rounds and start bonding over _bluegrass music_ , of all things. Jim talks about his split-decision to join Starfleet after a bar fight and the one time he drove his step-dad's antique car off a cliff because he was always a little shit, apparently. Leonard says very little about himself, but he does tell a few funny stories from his E.R. days that are slightly exaggerated and always get a laugh out of people. Jim, several drinks in at that point, throws his head back as he laughs way too hard at the snarky shit Leonard thought but never said to his patients. He thinks, vaguely, that Jim has a nice laugh. The skin around his eyes crinkles when he does it and, when he looks back at Leonard, his eyes twinkle a pretty shade of blue. He doesn't mind looking at it.

They finally call it quits when they're about to fall of their bar stools at around zero one hundred hours. Neither of them are in any state to go to their dorms alone, so Leonard decides to be the Responsible Adult, literally dragging Jim back to his room. He's warm against his side and his breath ghosts over Leonard's cheek. Leonard tries not to think about it.

Then Jim goes “nice” before throwing up on Ivan’s bed when they catch him and Lisa bent over Leonard’s desk. He’ll call it even.

Leonard wakes up first the next morning with a splitting headache and a twenty-something blonde, snoring lump on his couch. Ivan is nowhere to be seen, thank _god_. It's not until after they're both somewhat presentable, with Leonard brushing his teeth for the third time, that Jim comes up behind him with bloodshot eyes that remind him of the way he looked when they first met in that shuttle. Leonard watches him in the mirror.

"Hey, so," says Jim, leaning against the door frame. He smiles all casually. "Do you want to grab breakfast together? If you don't feel like it, that's cool, too. Obviously."

He's fidgeting. Leonard spits in the sink and rinses his mouth, considering, all the while watching Jim tries to look as uncaring as possible. He's watching Leonard closely, too. The thought comes, uninhibited, that maybe Jim asked Leonard to hang out last night for a reason. Not that Leonard is special or anything - just that Jim, despite his cockiness and cool-guy attitude, maybe has no friends.

Leonard wipes his face with a towel. He meets Jim's eyes in the mirror and says, "Sure," trying to sound just as casual.

If he wasn't looking so closely, he'd miss the way Jim straight up  _beams_ once he realizes Leonard is agreeing. He quickly covers it back up with that 'too cool to care' look. "Alright. Cool. I'll, uh..." He points back to the room and leaves Leonard alone. Leonard doesn't miss the way he almost skips back there as his whole body seems to straighten with some kind of new energy.

Once he's out of sight, Leonard looks at himself in the mirror. He imagines his mother back in Savannah cooing at him. She'd probably say something like, ' _Oh, my baby boy and his big, bleeding heart._ ' Then she'd hug him like he was a child again.

She's not here, though, so he just rubs his eyes with a sigh. "Not the dumbest thing you've done," he mumbles to himself, before straightening up and walking back out to meet Jim.

Jim grins at him, the blue of his eyes now shining like they did last night under the lights of the bar.

If Leonard gets a little soft at the sight? Well. Jim doesn't say anything about it.

He does make a point of holding the door open for him, though. "After you," he says. It's not until then that he feels the tugging on the corners of his lips.

Jim just laughs a little and walks out. Leonard follows behind, until Jim waits so that they can walk side-by-side. It's a five minute walk to the dining hall. They don't talk, but after a few moments, Leonard is mostly sure that the slight brushing of Jim's arm against his own is intentional. When he glances over, though, Jim is looking off in the distance. In a random moment of boldness, Leonard knocks their elbows together.

Jim startles, but when he looks at the smile on Leonard's face, he grins again. Then ducks his head. His smile is small again. Soft.

For the first time in a long time, Leonard feels hopeful about something.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr [@leiastwin](https://leiastwin.tumblr.com/) and twitter [@rapheliorn](https://twitter.com/rapheliorn)


End file.
